When the space shuttle Challenger exploded in January 1986, it marked the end of an era of unquestioning faith in American technology. The country reacted with a collective grief, numbness, and disbelief reminiscent of the response to President Kennedy's assassination. For the first time, Americans saw vividly the dark side of the nation's prized space program. No Downlink makes clear how a disaster of this type was inevitable and that it is emblematic of our dangerous dependence on immensely sophisticated technology and on the large organizations, closely tied to political and business interests, required to sustain it.With elegance and wit, Claus Jensen traces the history of rockets, from Wernher von Braun to the development of the "NASA culture." The book dramatically recounts the story of Challenger, including the hectic preparations (influenced by everything from Vice President Bush's travel plans to missing spare parts) and the postmortem investigation spearheaded by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. With cameo appearances by panicked senators bemoaning America's fate after Sputnik and Tom Wolfe's take on the first astronauts, No Downlink is a fresh and often frightening critique of a central chapter in contemporary American history, with profound implications for our increasingly technological world. Read Less